


Innocent When You Dream

by MooseFeels



Series: Innocent When You Dream [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, But not really ghosts and no one is dead its all a clever ruse, Death, Depression, Ghosts, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Retired Victor Nikiforov, Sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-05-21 08:20:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14911799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: After retiring post-injury, Viktor finds himself living in a town where no one knows him and he barely speaks the language-- a town in Japan, most accurately. He lives in his house for a few months before he finds out it's haunted. He lives in it a few more before he learns it's not haunted at all. The boy in the woods is very much alive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi: this is the work that has the edits, that will be finished, and that stands as part of my work process now. thank you for your patience with me. i really appreciate it.

Viktor stands beside the car, and he tries not to rest so much of himself on the cane, but he’s stiff from travel and he can’t help it, not really. His hand wraps over the head of it comfortably; he can feel the floral engraving on the top bite into his skin slightly.

Chris steps out of the driver’s seat. Makkachin on a lead in one hand, a box in the other.

“Viktor,” he says. “Are you sure? This seems-- this seems extreme.”

Viktor sighs, again.

“Yakov said the same thing when I cut my hair,” he replies. “Did you know that?”

Chris bumps his hip to close the door. “I’m not Yakov, Viktor. I’m probably your closest friend.”

This is true. Viktor finds himself exasperated anyway. As if he hasn’t been having this same conversation for the past two months.

He keeps his temper in check, though. Instead of screaming or crying, he smiles, as disarmingly as he can manage.

“I need some time,” he answers. “You understand.”

“I don’t,” Chris says. “But I love you, and I know that you think this is what you need.”

They walk up the steps, into the house. Viktor’s seeing it for the first time; it’s low and long, so different from his flat back in St. Petersburg. The only stairs his knee will have to fight are the two up to the door. He bought it totally online, while still cooped up in his hospital bed after surgery. He’s glad that it’s as good in person as it was in the pictures.

It’s beautiful, and importantly, it’s very, very far from Russia and very, very far from his skating career.

Chris places the box on a table. The furniture got here several days ago; his clothes and linens came, too. Most of it’s unpacked and ready to go. Viktor thanks god for moving services.

“Do you even speak Japanese?” Chris asks.

“I took classes before I left,” Viktor answers. “And I have guides. And all the time in the world now that I’m retired.”

Chris sighs, this time. “Plisetsky would still love you as a coach,” he says. “And there’s some up-coming skaters from Japan you could talk to, if you’re convinced you need to be out of Russia.”

“I need to be out of Russia, Chris, but I also need to be out of skating ,” he replies. “I know. I’ve thought about it. I thought about this a lot . I thought about it when I was in traction for a week, Christophe. I know. I need to be done.”

Christophe sighs, again.

“You have my number,” he says.

“And Yakov’s and Yuri’s and Georgi’s and Mila’s and Leroy’s,” he says. “I have everyone’s number. I promise, if I can’t open the jelly jar, I’ll call you.”

Christophe looks down at Makkachin, who shakes her tail. He leans down and pets her, scratching behind her ears. “You’ll take care of him, no?” he asks her. “Stubborn genius he is?”

“She will,” he says. “And you have a competition to get back to.”

Chris nods, after a moment. “You have a car coming?”

“Tuesday,” he replies. “It’s very cute. It looked cute. Go to your skate.”

Chris gives him a brief hug, and he leaves, and Viktor collapses down onto his couch, taking the mounting pressure off his knee and a load off his shoulders.

He’s so tired.

Makkachin pads over to him and sits on the couch, beside him. She sighs, resting her head on his thigh.

“Me too, old girl,” he murmurs. “Long day.”

He gets up from the couch after a long moment and limps through the house. Down a long, long hallway lined with long rooms with sliding doors. One of the rooms has his wardrobe and bed stashed in it, almost apologetically, baffled. The rest of his furniture is in a space on the opposite side of the hall, stuck there together. He opens another sliding door-- a long, covered walkway to another section. He trods down it, to what turns out is a spacious kitchen with a large gas stove; a laundry room; and a bathroom. The bathroom has a tall, high-sided tub and a spacious wooden bench. The toilet is in a small closet with a dedicated sink.

Viktor pees and then shuffles off to the other side of the house, sits back down on his couch and pulls out his phone, to look at his apps and his contacts for a long time.

He wanted to be alone, he guesses.

 

Viktor falls into a rhythm. It takes time, but it happens.

After what happened, his routine was shaken up pretty significantly from his training schedule. He’s already out of the habit of waking up at sunrise, but he’s still an early riser. He gets up and feeds Makkachin and then sets up on the back porch with his computer and his book and a pad of paper, and while she chases birds and does her business, Viktor sips tea and reads and thinks. After a while, when she’s tired, they go back inside and Viktor does what bodyweight exercises and personal training exercises he can manage. He’s lost weight in the past year; the muscle that drove him to his last (his sixth) GPF medal melted away under the stress of healing and surgery and the laxitude of spending days a time trapped in a bed. He never really had much body fat to start. He’s become mostly ribs and elbows where he used to be hard, angular muscle. Parts of it are there, but mostly Viktor finds that his clothes are smaller than they used to be and that situps come less naturally than before.

Viktor eats what he can of a breakfast and then he takes a bath, Makkachin watching television in the main part of the house.

He loves the bath. He loves the stiff brush he bought at the store scraping away the salt and sweat and dry skin. He loves his thick cake of soap. He loves the deep, tall tub he fills with hot water to his shoulders, surrounding him, soothing. He gets out and then wobbles back to the main house, and he looks at his phone. No calls, no messages.

Sometimes he gets groceries and newspapers. Goes to the library as often as he can; he orders books in Russian every once in awhile, but mostly he’s tearing his way through light novels and murder mysteries. He learns new vocabulary, the kind his language class probably wouldn’t give him. He bakes his own bread. He learns how to make Yakov’s Kulebyaka and how to knit socks.

Viktor finds himself building a little life out here, alone, in Japan. He realizes that it’s been more than twenty years since he’s developed a hobby or interest outside of skating.

Viktor is twenty-eight and he finds himself living a life a wealthy sixty year old might live. He finds that it’s more of a life than he was living before.

Christophe takes gold at World’s and Yuri Plisetsky takes a close silver.

Spring melts inexorably into Summer. Viktor’s not sure quite when it happens, but he knows when he realizes. A storm rolls in, in the night. Rattles his windows and doors. Makkachin leaps into bed with him, trembles under the sheets. In the morning, the heat rolls in and with it the lurid screaming of cicadas.

Summer rolls in.

Viktor gets up out of bed, sheets sticking to his back, and he lurches from his bedroom to the backyard, where Makkachin runs around for a few minutes while he gets her food ready from a cabinet in the kitchen. He’s stepping out, back to the porch, when he sees Makkachin facing the woods near the edge of the property, barking. Her tail is wagging and her bark echoes back to the house. It’s nearly seven and already the air is beginning to quiver with heat. Belatedly, Viktor realizes it must be most of the way through June.

“Makka!” he cries. “Breakfast!”

Makka barks twice more, before bounding back toward the house. She pants, grinning, before taking messy bites of breakfast.

“What did you see out there, mm?” He asks her. “Aren’t any deer out here, are there? Maybe a rabbit?”

She doesn’t answer.

Viktor keeps his eye trained on the treeline for a moment or two before limping to the bedroom to grab his cane and his book.

The heat grows more and more intolerable, until noon arrives, and Viktor realizes that he has to buy some kind of air conditioning, if for no other room than his bedroom. He changes into some summer slacks (people tend to ask about the scars; shorts are a bad idea if for nothing else than his vanity) and a clean shirt and sets Makka up with a news program before driving into town to see what he can get.

It turns out that the appliance shop along the main street is closed for the day-- the shutter early on Thursdays. Viktor takes a deep, steadying breath, before he decides to saunter into the convenience store for some ice cream. He picks out several cones and sandwiches and some popsicles (poor Makka must be suffering, too) and stands in line for the counter.

It’s a short kid with a streak of red in his bangs that scans his items and says, “Wait! Didn’t you buy the old house by the woods?”

Viktor blinks for a moment, before he realizes that he understands all of this kid’s Japanese. He finds himself smiling. “Yes,” he answers. “I did. Do you live here in town?”

The kid nods. “I’m Minami,” he says, tapping his name badge. “Is it true?” The kid asks. “Is it haunted ?”   
Viktor frowns. “Haunted?” He asks. He frowns more deeply. Says it in English-- “Haunted?”

Minami nods, eyes wide. “The dead boy! In the forest! Doesn’t he haunt the house? That’s why it was abandoned so long!” He says, his voice excitable.

“Dead boy?” Viktor asks.

Minami nods. “The little kid, back in the eighties or something? He drowned in a flood and now his ghost haunts the woods! Drove the owners of the old house insane!”

A kid to the side of Viktor moans. “Minami not this again -- Mr. Serizawa didn’t go insane he moved to be closer to his grandkids! It’s not haunted there’s just raccoons and an old news story about some stupid hikers! ”

“Is it haunted?” Minami asks, again, ignoring the detractor.

Viktor shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I’ve lived there since late March and it’s not haunted.”

Minami frowns. “Maybe he’s just shy! He’s supposed to be just a little kid! You should keep me updated!”

Viktor nods. “Of course,” he says. He pays for his purchases and leaves. “Thank you,” he calls behind himself, slipping out the door.

“Haunted,” he murmurs under his breath.

“What the hell,” he says, slipping into the driver-side seat of his car.

It will be hours later, in the the dead of the night, before he thinks about it again. He doesn’t know anything about this town or about the woods or about the house. It’s bizarre, to think it has some sordid local history.

“Haunted,” he whispers, listening to the night sounds of the crickets and the light, night rain. He wonders if it’s haunted like in a horror story or like in a love story.

He wonders why other than proximity to the woods it would be this particular house.

The idea, he realizes, in the morning, is equally preposterous and terribly interesting.

* * *

It’s July when Viktor finally makes it out of his house and into the small bar in town.

He doesn’t buy an air conditioner, just a couple of fans. He keeps reading, but he does most of his cooking and productive work in the late evening, when the heat of the day has passed and everything is settling into a soft coolness. He talks to Makkachin and he reads, and every once in  while, he wonders about whether or not his house is actually haunted.

Viktor left his booze in St. Petersburg. He hasn’t had a drink since March. The realization doesn’t feel like anything except the hollow victorious sensation that Yakov was wrong. The problem wasn’t the vodka, or the champagne or the gin.

Nothing seems out of the ordinary about his house.

Viktor isn’t planning on going to a bar, he just sort of stumbles into one out of the rain. The storm came from nowhere, suddenly, while Viktor was out for a walk with Makkachin. He laughs, tugging her inside, closing the door behind him shaking the water from his hair. He looks up, around himself, after a moment, and finds that other than a woman with hair growing out from an unfortunate dye job, he’s the only one here.

“Hi!” He greets, waving. “Sorry-- the storm. I got stuck in the storm. I can’t leave her outside. I can call a car.”

The bartender shakes her head. “Don’t bother,” she says. “Wait it out. I don’t mind dogs.”

Her gaze flicks to Makkachin just barely, and she smiles, softly, ever so slightly.

Viktor nods. “Thank you,” he says. “I am Viktor. This is Makkachin.” He strides over to the bartop, his cane clicking slightly on the surface of the floor. He settles into a stool and Makka rests by his feet in a large poof of damp brown fur.

The bartender pulls down a small, ceramic cup and a bottle. Pours something for him.

“Sake,” she says.

Viktor nods. “Thanks,” he says. “I’m new. Still.”

She nods. “I thought maybe you were a tourist,” she says. She speaks in careful, deliberate Japanese. Viktor appreciates the care. “Welcome to town. When did you come?”

“Early spring,” he says. “March. I stay at home.”

“Bad knee like that I’m not surprised,” she answers. She extends a hand forward. “Katsuki Mari. Katsuki,” she introduces.

“Katsuki,” Viktor repeats, taking her hand. “Viktor Nikiforov. Viktor.”   
She raises an eyebrow. “The skater,” she says. “I thought you looked familiar.”

Viktor shrugs. Nurses the sake. “Retired,” he says. “That bad knee.”

Katsuki nods. Doesn’t press it. “If you’re hungry we have a grill in the back. I can make something for you and your dog.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I take it business picks up later?”   
She shrugs. “Small town. We’re dependent on the tourist season in the summer, more than anything. This whole area is small towns.”   
“Did you grow up here?” Viktor asks.

She shakes her head. “Moved here a few years ago, from somewhere else. Needed a change.”

Viktor nods. He knows the feeling.

The door opens and a few people file in. Viktor considers his sake while they exchange conversation with Katsuki. He reaches for his wallet, to leave a few bucks on the bartop, but Katsuki interrupts him. “Don’t bother,” she says. “Think of it as a welcome to town.”

Viktor smiles. “Thanks,” he murmurs. He slides off the stool, tugging on Makkachin’s leash.

“Wait!” Someone shouts. Viktor turns, and a man with large glasses and a sizeable bald spot frowns at him. “Didn’t you move into the old Serizawa place?” He asks, in English.

Viktor shrugs. “Maybe?” He replies, in English. “I never met the realtor in person. I was just looking for a house without stairs.”

“Goro,” Katsuki sighs, behind the counter.

“So,” the man says. “Is it true?”

Viktor frowns. “Is what true?” He asks.

“They think my brother is haunting your house,” she says, sharply. Back to Japanese, quick and irritated. “Because they live in a small town and have nothing better to do.” She turns, and frowns heavily at the balding man with glasses. “But it’s not a supernatural tragedy; it’s just a normal one about my dead brother who disappeared in high school.”

The air seems to roll out of the room.

Viktor gets the impression that this is an old argument.

Viktor nods.

“I would listen to Ms. Katsuki,” he says, the reply rolling from his mouth easily. “Have a good evening. Thank you for the drink.”

The rain has stopped when he steps outside. Cicadas and birdsong, again. The air rapidly heating.

“Let’s go home, mm?” He asks Makkachin. “I think that’s enough excitement for the day.”

It’s nearly sundown when he gets home. He heats up some leftover soup and settles on his back porch to eat it and watch the fireflies come out.

Makkachin settles beside him, exhausted.

Viktor looks out, into his backyard, the grass overgrown and long. Maybe he should cut it. Maybe he has a garden shed. Maybe he’d like to garden.

Viktor looks out. “Would you like a garden?” he asks.

He asks in Japanese.

No one answers.

“Maybe you would come, if I grew flowers?” He asks. “What flowers do you like?”

There is still no reply.

“I don’t know the words for the flowers I like,” he says. He moves to English. He figures as long as he’s talking to a definitely fake ghost, he can use whatever languages he likes. “I hate roses. If I never see a rose again, it will be too soon.” He smiles, but it’s not a smile that is joy. It’s--

“ Подсолнухи ,” he says. “ Подсолнухи и пионы.”

His favorites.

“I like that they’re big,” he says. “With lots of little parts.”

“Would they grow here?” He asks. “Would you like them?”

Viktor imagines that being a ghost must be lonesome.

There is no answer, but the cicadas do scream.

Viktor gets up from his porch when his bowl is empty, and he doesn’t think twice of it when Makkachin barks into the treeline for a bit while he washes his bowl.

Viktor sleeps dreamlessly.

* * *

He gets the call in September. He’s not sure why it’s taken so long (it’s taken so long because Yuri is proud).

“When are you coming back?” He asks. His voice growls, still the same pitch and timbre it was when Viktor left. That change is coming, and soon. Viktor knows. He remembers those cusp years. The anxiety that filled his every moment and it just happened .

He’s still unsure if he was lucky in puberty or just moneyed enough that it wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t. The positive of having wealthy— if distant— parents.

“I’m not,” he replies. “I live here now. I have a visa and everything.” He’s laying in bed. Makkachin has padded off somewhere, probably in one of the large rooms he hasn’t divided into a different space. It’s a bad day. His whole leg, from his knee up to his hips, aches. Feels like he caught a bad fall on in the ice and he can’t shake it.

He almost laughs at the thought. In a way, it’s true.

“You must be bored,” Yuri continues. “There isn’t even a rink in that town. The nearest is almost fifty miles away!”

“I know,” Viktor replies. “That was intentional.”

He’s never going to skate again. Temptation.

Yuri growls. “Yakov is an idiot ,” he says.

“He taught me everything I know,” Viktor replies. “You’ll go further just getting it straight from the source than hearing it secondhand from me. Yakov got me six medals, Yuri.”

“Georgi is still lovestruck and Mila is insufferable. Who do  you even talk to in that town?”

“I have friends,” Viktor says. “I’m the belle of society out here.”

This is a lie, and Viktor thinks that if Yuri were here in person, he would have the wherewithal to call him on it, when Viktor is in front of him and not just a voice on the phone.

“ At least you have talent ,” he says. “Unlike the rest of them. None of them know anything .”

“I  _had_  talent, Yuri,” Viktor replies. _For all the good it did me._

“You promised ,” Yuri hisses.

“I did,” Viktor says. He looks up, at his ceiling. “Things changed, Yuri.”

Chilly silence fills Viktor’s ears.

They’ve had this conversation before. Viktor wonders if they’ll have the whole one again tonight, or if Yuri will hold off.

_You’re just going to give up? Just like that?_ Yuri had asked him, once, in the hospital.

Viktor barely had the composure to ask Yuri to leave before he fell apart.

“How is your stupid dog?” Yuri asks, instead of opening old wounds.

“She’s very good,” Viktor says. “I think the woods are good for her. Big backyard. Warm summer. The weather is good for her joints. Our joints.”

“You spoil her,” Yuri says.

“You sound like Yakov,” Viktor answers.

Overall, the call goes better than Viktor thought it would. He hangs up, and Yuri still seems like he’ll talk to him, and Viktor thinks he’ll still talk to Yuri.

He curses himself for keeping his pain pills in the bathroom as he limps there, leaning heavily into his cane. He shakes a pill out of the bottle and swallows it dry. Grabs a sleeve of crackers and a can of tea from the kitchen to take back to his bedroom with him.

Maybe on his next good day, he’ll rearrange the furniture. Make this end of the house look like somewhere he lives and not just space containing the route he takes to the porch and back.

Maybe.

He groans and he gets back into bed. Makkachin pads into the room, her nails clicking on the floor. She climbs into bed, beside him.

Viktor lays back down.

“I’m sorry, old girl,” he says. “I know you probably want some excitement, yes?”

She just looks at him with her dark eyes. Never disappointed in him, even when Viktor has been eminently disappointing.

“We’ll go out tomorrow,” he says. “Go to a park? Or maybe in the woods. Not too far.”

The pill begins to hit, dragging fuzzy edges over the pain and also on his wakefulness. He doesn’t take them often; not as often as the doctor told him he should.

Viktor hates feeling dulled, and since it happened, everything has felt that way.

He falls asleep slowly, the sound of early fall filtering through his house.

 

After Yuri’s call, Viktor starts going to Katsuki’s bar more often. He figures that even if she’s a bartender and he’s paying for that interaction that he should have at least one friend in town. And it works, for the most part. He pays for drinks and she makes bar snacks for him and Makkachin to nibble on. They talk about sports and local landmarks. She expands his vocabulary and he trades her for bits of Russian and English.

A kind of agreement settles between them. Viktor doesn’t ask about her brother, and she doesn’t ask about skating. It’s a relief, honestly. The person in the village who recognizes him gives him the space to be free from it. It’s not hiding if no one asks and they know anyway, he figures.

Viktor doesn’t tell her that he sits out on his back porch most nights and talks to the air, to the ghost of her brother that isn’t there.  He talks about the weather, about the town, about the results of the competitions he’s missing. Viktor talks regularly, to the ghost that isn’t there.

So Viktor spends two nights a week in the bar, and he has one or two drinks before he heads home, and the rest of the week he spends reading or studying or cooking or walking his dog, and in this way, time passes until Viktor wakes up one late November day and it’s snowing.

He’s slouching out of his cold bedroom and to the bathroom to take a pill (the cold settles hard in his bones and highlights cracks and sharp spots, places where he’s been broken and put back together again). He’s heading out the door and he slides it open and he feels his breath stutter in his lungs.

It would have started snowing in St. Petersburg earlier than now. Winter comes earlier there; winter never really leaves. It’s early in the snowfall; the flakes are fat and wet and settling in melting soft shapes over the ground, greying but not yet dense and white. He’d barely realized how cold it had been getting.

And it’s snowing .

Makkachin barks a few times before diving into it, prancing and chasing. Snow is an old friend to her; it must be wonderfully familiar.

The wetness on his cheeks must be snowfall, Viktor reasons, shaking a pill out of a bottle. It would be ridiculous to cry over snow.

He makes a cup of coffee. Pours food in a bowl for Makkachin and shuffles back outside.

He looks at his phone for a long, long time, considering.

It’s been months since he heard from Yuri. Longer since he heard from Chris.

Viktor considers, before sighing, and tossing it back in the house.

The cold bites at his skin and his bones, but in a familiar way. A way like home. Puppy bites.

“Too late for me to make a garden now,” Viktor comments. “Do you like snow? Do you mind snow?”

There is no answer. Ghosts keep their opinions to themselves, he figures.

“I talk to your sister, you know,” he says. Something feels different today. Something he can’t quite explain. “Not about you. She doesn’t talk about you, but she loves you. I can tell.”

He takes a sip of his coffee. “I’m not talking to her that way, for the record,” he says. “If you knew me, you’d know the rumors, but they were never true. Helpful, though. No one thought for a moment I might be gay.”

There’s no answer. No solidarity (as there had been with Chris) and no condemnation either (as there had been with his parents).

The snow falls softly. The sound is different, with the snow falling. Everything feels closer, nearer, more quiet. More intimate. A silence that can hold him carefully. The snowfall silence an old friend.

“I’m tired,” he says. “I thought maybe that being away from them would make me less tired. Chris is all energy and Yuri is too loud for his own good and the press wanted everything. I thought if I stopped, I would stop being tired.”

He sighs. Shakes his head.

“How do you stop being tired?” He asks. “It used to-- I used to--” He curls and uncurls his hands.

“Nothing means anything, anymore,” he says. The admission, he can feel it rip up out of the roots of himself. “Nothing means anything, not even the tiredness.”

He feels, for a moment, the foolishness of unspooling himself to the air between his porch and the woods. Looking for answers from ghosts that aren’t even there.

But who could he tell, really, besides the air here? Who would listen?

Who wouldn’t just want him to go back to the rink already, to be tired that way, again?

True to form, there are no answers.

Ghosts keep their opinions to themselves.

Viktor watches the snow fall, slowly.

* * *

Winter hurts in a way Viktor never knew anything could.

It’s not just that it settles into his bones and joints and muscles, inviting new aches and sharp pains. It’s the way everything freezes over, turning white and silver, painfully familiar. His breath, hanging on the air a reminder of hours, years , of his life spent at the rink.

It’s the way everything in him hurts physically and also the way everything is a reminder of life before .

December comes, and no one calls. Viktor makes it out of the house to buy groceries about once a week, but the pain and the something else-- the tiredness-- keeps him home the rest of the time. He stops going to the bar; the idea of talking to anyone too much for him to bear. Mari would be concerned, he knows, and he’s not sure he can handle the crease that forms between her eyebrows on his good days, much less his bad ones.

And besides, it’s harder to mourn that he used to fly when he refuses to extricate himself from his bed.

Winter hurts.

Viktor lets himself lose track of time. Lets days slips by and weeks with them, until he gets a call one morning.

He rolls over and answers it, blearily.

“Yes?” He murmurs.

“Viktor,” Chris purrs, on the other end of the line. “Happy birthday.”

“I don’t celebrate my birthday, Christophe, you know this,” he answers, because it’s true.

And then it hits him, a series of waves.

It’s Christmas.

It’s his birthday.

He’s thirty.

He’s thirty.

Viktor hangs up. He lets his phone fall out of his hand, onto the floor, and he stares up, at the ceiling. Overwhelmed, painfully, by all of it. By everything.

He’s thirty.

Viktor sits up in bed and he can’t figure out where to place his gaze. His eyes feel unamoored from his skull and his brain feels like it’s scrabbling for traction on something increasingly slippery. He’s thirty. He’s thirty years old. He’s an old man. He’s an old man and he’s not skating anymore and he’s not even coaching.

He feels his hands clutching, but what they’re grabbing, he isn’t sure. He just looks at the rictus curl of his fingers, holding air.

At his age, his parents were married with three kids.

Viktor sits in his bed, thirty, and clutches air.

He realizes it’s all he has.

No one else calls. Not Yuri and not Yakov.

Viktor sits in bed, he’s not sure how long.

He sits in bed until he hears Makkachin barking from the other side of the house-- outside, in the annex with all the plumbing. He looks up, and listens for several minutes. He doesn’t hear anything except her barking for a long time, and then he hears a startled, rushing sound and a person’s voice anxiously shushing .

Viktor hears another person’s footsteps on the wooden pathway between parts of his house.

Viktor throws off his blankets and gras his cane. He slides into a pair of slippers and limps from his bedroom to the door, where he sees Makkachin, barking into the treeline, where a set of footprints from his bathroom to the woods trail in the snow.

“Haunted,” Viktor murmurs.

Viktor turns and he grabs a leash and his coat and a pair of good shoes and he stumbles, aching and uneasy, from his house to his backyard. He clips the leash onto Makkachin’s collar, and follows the footsteps, deep into the woods.

It feels deep. Viktor’s never been much of an outdoorsman, and his hiking has generally been interrupted by his injury.

But he follows the footsteps into the woods, deeper and deeper, until he approaches what looks like--

A campsite.

Viktor stares at a tent beside a small cave. A fire circle. A line hanging between two trees. A pan and a pot leaning against a rock, overturned. Something elaborate, with a pump, beside it, tangled.

He looks for a long time, before Makkachin barks a couple of times, and--

There’s a rustling, and the tent unzips and--

The ghost peers out.


	2. Chapter 2

A lot happens, all at once.

Makkachin jerks forward, barking happily. The ghost squawks and tugs the tent closed. Viktor feels his heartbeat stutter a few times, and he loses his footing in the snow, where Makkachin tugs, pulling him toward the tent.

“Shit!” Viktor exclaims. “Makka! Please!”

She keeps barking though, tail wagging joyously. Viktor fights with her leash, the snow, and his cane to get back up, but the damage is done, and he feels a new twinge in his knee that forewarns swelling and purpling in about two hours.

Makkachin stops barking, eventually, but she does keep wagging her tail, looking at the sealed entrance to the tent.

Viktor clears his throat, after a moment.

“Uh,” he says. “Hi! I’m-- i’m Viktor.”

There’s no reply.

“I guess-- I guess we’re neighbors,” he continues, after a moment.

There’s still no reply.

Viktor bites his lip. Unsure.

Very, very slowly, the tent unzips. The door opens, and someone carefully sticks their head out, to look up at Viktor with wide, frightened brown eyes.

Viktor picks up a lot of detail all at once.

This face shouldn’t be gaunt. It doesn’t want to be gaunt. The shape of the bones and cheek and eyes and mouth, all of these are round, but there’s a thinness that seems unnatural and strange. Long, dark hair intercedes into their eyes, drapes onto the shoulders, wet. Their eyes are a sort of warm, brown color, red-and-gold toned and soft. They were cheap glasses that seem to be held together with duct tape, the lenses scuffed and scratched.

Their lips are blue.

Makkachin steps forward, politely, and licks the stranger’s face, and they laugh brightly and suddenly, directing their attention from Viktor to his dog. Their hands shake a little where they reach out to touch her, to scratch behind her ears.

“This is Makkachin,” Viktor says. “She’s a very good judge of character.”

They look up at him, again. Whatever the laughter shattered reassembles, suddenly, and they say, their voice terribly hoarse and strange, “The Serizawas…”

They trail off. If Viktor had not been straining to hear, he is not sure he would have heard.

“They retired,” Viktor replies. “Some daughter or something. Moved somewhere warm. I’m Viktor. I live there now. Here, now. There, now.”

Somehow, their eyes get wider.

“Please,” they say. “Please-- I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.” Their voice shifts, overquiet English to rushed and overloud Japanese. Their voice crackles, brittle, at the edges.

Viktor fights to keep his expression neutral. To not frown, misunderstanding.

“I’ll move,” they say. “Please. Don’t tell anyone.”

Their lips are blue. Their hair is wet.

They’re so thin .

“Makkachin interrupted your bath,” Viktor says. “You should be able to finish it, in peace.”

They look at him, confused.

Viktor is confused, too.

“You used their bath, when they were away for the winters,” Viktor says, half realizing, half laying out the lay of the land. “Makkachin interrupted your bath. You should finish.”

They shake their head, more of their hair falling into their eyes.

“ Please ,” they say, again.

Viktor can’t help the frown that twitches across his face. “I won’t-- it’s-- that’s none of my business,” he says. “That’s none of my business,” he repeats, in Japanese. “But you were bathing. . Your hair is wet and there’s snow on the ground. Your lips are blue. You are cold. Please. Come finish your bath.”

Viktor begins to worry that maybe this person will decide to freeze to death in the woods, but after a long moment, they unfold out of the tent.

They’re shorter than Viktor, and their frame is much, much slighter. Viktor is thin, now, but they look like a strong wind would carry them away. Their clothes overwhelm them when they stand, draping loose and heavy around their body. Their shoes are worn. Pants and sweater patched.

Their eyes flick from Viktor’s cane up to his face.

He looks at Viktor for a moment, before shivering and nodding. He opens his mouth, to say something, and after a beat, says, “I’m Yuuri.”

Viktor feels himself smile, weakly. “Hello, Yuuri,” he says. “Please, come finish your bath.”

* * *

Makkachin walks ahead of him, at an easy, rambling sort of pace. Viktor is grateful that his dog is getting old the same time he is. The fall definitely did something to his knee and he feels a sort of numb, radiant pain from it, leading down to his foot and up to his hip. He leans into his cane.

Yuuri walks beside him, silent. Curled into his own bodyspace, shivering.

“You can walk ahead of me, if you would like” Viktor says, trying to sound light and easy. Approachable. Nothing to be afraid of.

Yuuri doesn’t though, and they round a bend, the yard finally beginning to come into view, when Yuuri finally says, “You’re hurt.”

Viktor shrugs. “Old injury,” he says. “It does not like snow. I’ll be fine.”

Yuuri’s brow furrows. “You’re hurt,” he repeats, as if it will somehow explain something.

Viktor shrugs, again. “Nothing to do for it,” he says.

Yuuri doesn’t say anything else, but there is an expectant, frustrated sort of expression that settles over his face.

They finally follow Viktor’s footsteps back to the house. It looks odd from this angle, in this light. It looks smaller than Viktor knows it is. It looks dreadfully empty.

They head up the handful of wooden steps up to the porch, and Makkachin slips inside easily. They both stand there, seeming to regard each other.

Yuuri looks slight and cold. His hands shake as he brushes a lock of his long, dark hair behind his round ear.

“I- I- I’m sorry,” he says in English, his voice shaking.

Viktor shakes his head. “The apologies...they should be mine. I have lived here since the spring and I did not realize I had a neighbor.” He coils Makkachin’s leash around his hand and tosses it inside the house. “Please. Finish your bath. I’ll cook something.”

Yuuri nods, and Viktor pauses to watch him slink from the porch into the bathroom.

Viktor slips out of his shoes and back into his slippers, and he walks back to the kitchen. Makkachin follows behind him, to lay in the bed Viktor put beside the stove for her.

Viktor hears the sound of water running, the soft shuffling of someone else in the house. It’s both startling and comforting, in its way. He pulls out a cutting board and a knife, and he looks at it for a long moment before he moves to the refrigerator.

Yuuri looks so thin .

Viktor sighs and pulls out a loin of pork he’s been thinking about. He take a couple of onions and an apple. In the back of the fridge is a bottle of white wine past its use for drinking. He runs the knife through the onion and crushes a few pieces of ginger. He adds a bit of oil to the bottom of a heavy pan and turns on the heat, and sears the pork. He remembers to turn on the oven, and he hums to himself, absently, as he cooks. Sears the pork and removes it from the pan. Adds the onion, to pick up the fond and the color and then the ginger and garlic and pepper and a hearty pinch of salt. He wishes he had the forethought to have thyme. He deglazes with the wine and settles the apple into the bottom of the pan, cut in chunks. Adds the pork back and slides the whole dish into the oven.

He looks at his sink, before he decides that isn’t enough food. He pulls a pot out of his cabinet and fills it with water. Salts it heavily and brings it to a boil while he chops potatoes, to toss in.

Makkachin barks and gets up, and Viktor looks up from the cutting board to see Yuuri, in the doorway. His long hair is dried, and it occurs to Viktor that there must be a hairdryer in the bathroom. He looks dry and his cheeks look pinker.

“Thank you,” he says, softly. “I should get back.”

Viktor shakes his head. “I’m making dinner, and I could never eat all of it myself. Please. Join me.”

“I-- can not,” Yuuri says, looking away. His hair, like a privacy curtain, slides into his face. It looks soft. “I— bothered you, too much.” There’s a weighty pause, like Yuuri might be swallowing. “Thank you for letting me take a bath.”

“Of course,” Viktor says. “We interrupted you. And it only seemed the right thing to do.” He can find the word in Russian, but it’s escaping him in English and he never knew it in Japanese. Something about obligation. Something about his duty . “When was the last time you had a warm meal? Please. Stay.”

As if on cue, Yuuri’s stomach growls, loudly. Makkachin pads over to him and Viktor catches Yuuri smile, leaning down to pet her.

Viktor feels his heart stutter, at that barest glimpse of Yuuri’s smile.

He slides the potatoes into the water and sets his timer.

Yuuri looks up, from Makkachin, and says, carefully, “The Serizawas, they always left for the winter? Are you renting from them?”

Viktor shakes his head. “They moved somewhere, to be closer to a daughter. I bought the house. It’s just me and Makkachin.”

“I hear her, sometimes,” he says. “In the mornings. She’s very friendly.”

Viktor smiles. He pulls butter and milk from his fridge. “She’s the very best dog,” he says. “It makes sense that she would be such a good judge of character.”

Yuuri doesn’t look back up at him, but his soft smile stays. He doesn’t say anything, but he does bite his bottom lip. After a long moment, he turns. He opens his mouth and closes it, as if searching fo something to say. “I…can not…stay,” he says in deliberate English.

“Please,” Viktor interrupts.

There’s a tension. There’s something decidedly fragile, hanging in the air.

Yuuri doesn’t say anything, but he does nod. He does stay.

Viktor pulls the potatoes from the water and adds them in a bowl with warm milk and butter, big pinches of salt and white pepper. He checks the temperature on the pork after the potatoes come together. He pulls it from the oven, to rest it while he runs his knife through some lettuce and some radishes and carrots. He pulls plates from his cabinets-- it’s been so long since he used more than one. He slices the pork into generous chops, spoons a generous pile of potatoes beside it and salad, too. He hands it to Yuuri, and Yuuri looks at it with wide, bewildered eyes. He holds the plate with both of his hands.

“Thank you,” he says, softly. “It’s...beautiful.”

Viktor grins back. “I hope it’s delicious,” he says, laughing a little. Nervously.

Yuuri smiles. “My-- my table is over there,” Viktor says. He takes his own plate and sits down. Makkachin pads over and sits beside him, the warmth of her side next to his cold feet.

Yuuri murmurs something before he takes his fork and takes a bite of his pork and--

Yuuri covers his mouth with his left hand, shaking. His eyes flutter closed, his cheeks go pink. It’s like he lights up, suddenly, and then hands shaking and body frantic, he wolfs down the pork, the potatoes, the salad.

Viktor takes a few bites. It’s not salted enough and the pork isn’t tender the right way.

Yuuri doesn’t seem to mind.

Yuuri takes another bite, and then something happens. His face-- his features shift. His eyes go overwhelmed, glassy and teary.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says. “I’m sorry. Sorry. It’s-- it’s very good. Sorry. Sorry, I should--” He stands, a little unsteady on his own feet. Yuuri makes a sound; a laugh that isn’t a laugh. “I’m sorry,” he says, again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” And Yuuri stumbles out of the kitchen and Viktor stands, in time to see him pull on his shoes and dash, out of his house. Into the snowbright night.

Viktor stands on his porch and he watches Yuuri, the ghost, disappear.

* * *

Viktor knows it isn’t a dream when he wakes up the next morning and there’s a bruise, deep purple and black, radiating around his knee. Even then, with the pain hanging off of him, he’s not sure it was real. It was so-- it was so strange.

Sharp, in a way. Yuuri, with long hair and haunted eyes hiding in the woods, sneaking into the bath. His voice, too soft and too loud, both.

The bruise goes from dark, deep purple to blue and green. His birthday fades away from the calendar, and soon Viktor finds that he has to buy a new calendar all together. 

Time passes. A new year slips into Viktor’s house, unmarked by champagne or fireworks or church.

Time passes and Viktor becomes more and more certain that it didn’t happen. But, of course, there’s a dish in his cupboard that is clean instead of dusty. There is a bruise on his ruined leg.

He thinks he invented it, and then he limps from his bedroom to the living room and Makkachin leaves him to bound into the backyard and bark at the treeline.

Makkachin-- she has no doubt.

Viktor stands, leaning on his cane, to watch her for a long time, and after several minutes, she begins to turn in circles, happily, tail wagging.

And after a long few moments, Yuuri emerges from out of the woods, and kneels to greet her.

His face looks lighter when he smiles like that.

Yuuri stands up, after a moment. And he doesn’t look at Viktor, but Viktor can see the way he wants to, the way his eyes stay fixed on the ground. There’s something to the way he has to tear his eyes from ground. Something to the way his eyebrows furrow and he chews his lip.

Yuuri stands there, quiet, before he says, “You’re hurt.”

His voice is clear, and the sentence sounds rehearsed.

Viktor shakes his head. “I used to be,” he says.

Yuuri’s eyes flick to the cane. “You’re hurt,” he says again. He takes a deep breath. “The winter,” he says. “The cane. It must hurt. And you fell.”

Viktor shrugs. “I got hurt,” he says.

Yuuri’s frowns. His hands fidget a little.

Makkachin barks a few times.

Viktor shivers. His cane bites into his hand where he grips it. “I’m-- cold,” he murmurs. “Would you like some tea?”

Yuuri shivers a little, too, when he nods.

Makkachin bounds when she walks beside him, entering into the house. Yuuri follows Viktor into his living room. He settles, uneasily, onto Viktor’s couch.

Viktor busies himself with his teakettle, and he tries not to let his eyes drag over the thin quality of Yuuri’s cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes and the barest quiver in his hands when he takes the tea.

Yuuri wraps his hands around the mug and looks at the teabag and looks at the teakettle and looks at Viktor, and he says, plainly, “It’s only you and your dog.”

Viktor shrugs. “You live in the woods,” he answers.

“You can’t live by yourself,” Yuuri says.

“You can’t live in the woods,” Viktor answers.

“I’m fine,” Yuuri says.

“It’s winter,” Viktor answers. “There’s snow on the ground. Your lips were blue yesterday. What if you got hurt?”

“ You’re hurt,” Yuuri answers, his voice going just a little louder.

Viktor bites his lip. Furrows his brow.

“You can’t just live in the woods; what if something happens?” He asks, looking at Yuuri.

“You’re hurt ,” Yuuri repeats, his voice louder again.

“I’m fine! ” Viktor answers, and he realizes, hearing the ringing of his voice in the room, that he is shouting.

When he stops gripping the head of his cane, the flower engraved on the top has left an impression into his palm. He looks at it, blankly, for a long moment, his voice echoing in his ears.

“What was the last thing you ate?” Viktor asks Yuuri.

“I caught a fish in the river,” Yuuri answers. “I grilled it.”

“When?” Viktor asks.

“Not long ago,” Yuuri replies. It’s a deft dodge. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I had grechka,” Viktor answers.

“When?” Yuuri asks.

“Not long ago,” Viktor replies.

Yesterday morning.

“You have to eat something,” Yuuri says.

“So do you,” Viktor answers.

Yuuri’s eyes are dark, rich brown. He looks at him, seriously, for a long moment, before he says, “I’ll cook dinner.”

“And you’ll sleep in my guest bedroom,” Viktor answers.

Both statements, Viktor realizes, are ground out between them like thinly veiled threats.

Yuuri’s gaze is cool and steady. “Okay,” he answers.


	3. Chapter 3

Yuuri feels his hands shake, just barely, as he stands in the kitchen, in front of the cutting board, holding the knife.

The feeling of being in the kitchen is at once so familiar and also terribly strange. He closes his eyes and he remembers. It must be almost seven years now since he did this. He feels a weight on his tongue at the thought. Seven years.

He only used the bath when the Serizawa’s weren’t around. Didn’t sleep in their bedrooms or use the kitchen. He couldn’t risk being seen . Someone noticing the slight water usage and lit windows in the night. Yuuri can’t risk being found.

Yuuri can’t be found, because he’s dead. He made sure.

Yuuri lets the feeling of the knife in his hand steel him. Ground him, here, in this moment.

_We are here,_ he thinks.  _And this is now._

Yuuri chops the onion and tosses it in some oil in a pan, letting it pick up some color. He adds a few chopped carrots before adding the pork.

“Do you have chocolate?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor looks at him, from the table, his fine silver hair falling into his eyes.

Yuuri still can’t quite believe Viktor is real .

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Why?”

Yuuri shrugs. “We always put it in the curry,” he says. “Makes it taste better.”

“I thought that the...the cube had everything you needed,” Viktor says.

Yuuri sighs. “What about honey?” he asks.

Viktor nods. “Cabinet by the sink,” he says. “With the tea.”

Yuuri nods. He adds water to the pan and the brick of curry, letting it dissolve. He adds a couple tablespoons of honey and he chops an apple to toss in.

Viktor doesn’t have a rice cooker, but Yuuri makes rice for him easily enough.

Yuuri still can’t believe Viktor is real.

Yuuri can’t believe that he’s in Japan, that he’s in this house, that Yuuri is in his kitchen, and he can’t believe that he won’t let Yuuri sleep in his tent. Yuuri can’t believe any of this is real, but he keeps his breath and instead of saying anything, he focuses on making curry.

His stomach growls. It’s been years since he had curry. Since he decided to disappear.

Makkachin barks happily and trots to stand beside him, her body a steady warmth against his legs. She’s bigger than Vicchan.

Yuuri named his dog after Viktor.

He tries not to think about it.

He tries not to think about the cane .

Yuuri swallows. He pushes some of his hair behind his ear. It’s longer than it used to be.

“When the rice is done, it will all be ready,” he says. “It should take about twenty minutes.”

Viktor nods. “Would you like to take a bath, while it finishes?” he asks.

Yuuri feels his eyes flit to the kitchen door.

He nods.

Viktor nods back. “Feel free to use my soap and shampoo,” he says, in English.

Yuuri nods, barely. And he slinks off to the bathroom, feeling the tension in the room unbearable against his skin.

It’s been so long since he was around another person so much. Since he talked to someone or saw them or heard the way their body occupied a room. It’s so strange, and something about it chafes under his clothes. Gets under his skin.

Yuuri’s hands and feet are all calluses, rough where they touch his ribs and hips. His skin is tanned and cold to the touch. His clothes look thin and small on the floor. They don’t fit well-- mostly stolen from summer laundry lines in nearby towns. They’re dirty-- hard to wash in the winter.

Yuuri is cold, the tips of his finger and toes and nose and ear chilled near permanently in the winter air. He thinks it might be January. He loses track.

The bathwater, however, is very warm. It’s different from how it was at home. It’s the same.

Yuuri settles to his neck, his knees brought close. He closes his eyes.

_We are here,_ he thinks.  _This is now ._

He stays in the bath until there’s a knock on the door.

“It’s done,” Viktor says in heavily accented Japanese. “There’s a bathrobe for you on the doorknob. We can throw your clothes in the wash.”

The bathwater is grey when Yuuri emerges; he scrubbed at his skin before getting in but it doesn’t seem to matter (it never seems to matter). He towel dries, and true to his word, there's a fluffy white bathrobe resting on the knob outside. 

The terry texture of it catches on the calluses on his hands. He looks at them for a long moment. The wide scar stretching across his left palm. The bruised fingernails. 

He ties the robe and goes back to the kitchen. 

* * *

Yuuri looks different, bundled up in Viktor’s bathrobe, cheeks flushed red from hot bathwater. His long, dark hair is brushed away from his face and even though his glasses are still smudged and scratched and falling apart, they seem to fit easier on his face. They look like they belong there, instead of being somehow accidental.

His inky hair spills over his shoulders, curling slightly.

Viktor’s soap smells like almonds; now Yuuri does, too.

Viktor pulls the lid off of the rice and the curry, and the curry smells better than it did the time he tried to make it. Richer. He portions some rice into a bowl and ladles curry on top, and he hands Yuuri the bowl with a fork.

Yuuri looks at the fork suspiciously for a moment.

Viktor shrugs. “I didn’t buy the house for entertaining,” he says, in English. “Just me.”

Yuuri bows his head slightly, murmurs something in Japanese before taking a bite.

Viktor prepares himself a bowl and sits across from Yuuri.

The food is rich and good . The curry has more body, a little thicker than when Viktor made it. The pork is tender and the apples are still firm even though the carrots and onions are tender.

“Mmm,” Viktor murmurs, his mouth full of food. “ _Vkusno_  .”

Yuuri eats a little, and then all at once, fork clinking at the bottom of the bowl.

Viktor eats half his bowl and then the rest of it sits in the bottom of his stomach like a lead weight.

Yuuri covers his mouth with his hand for a long moment, turning a little pale.

“Too quick?” Viktor asks.

Yuuri shakes his head, unsteadily. Lying.

There’s a moment, tense, both of them waiting for something. But Yuuri’s color returns and he moves his hand from his mouth, and he says, “I think I should wait some, before I have more.”

Viktor nods. “This sounds wise,” he says.

“Where are my clothes?” Yuuri asks.

“I’m washing them,” Viktor answers. “In a few hours they should be clean and dry. I have some pajamas you could use though, for the the night.”

Yuuri looks uncomfortable with the idea, but he doesn’t say anything. “I will clean the dishes,” he says.

Viktor shakes his head. “You cooked,” he says.

“You’re hurt ,” Yuuri answers, standing and grabbing both bowls.

“I’m not an invalid,” Viktor spits. It takes a moment for him to realize he said it in Russian. A reflex leftover from St. Petersburg. He sighs, heavily, before standing. “I can do it,” he says. “I can.”

Yuuri washes the bowls, though, while Viktor pulls out storage to put the leftover curry and rice in.

Yuuri doesn’t say anything more about Viktor’s limp. Makkachin follows them both out of the annex and into the main house, through the common room and to the guest bedroom.

There’s a bed and a dresser and a small desk. The bed is made-- made long ago with the expectation that eventually, probably, someone would land on his doorstep.

Yuuri looks at it with a queasy sort of expression, a lot like the one from dinner.

Yuuri keeps looking at the bed with his large, soft eyes, and he says, “You said the house was only for you.”

Viktor shrugs a little, leaning into the doorway, the wooden frame of the door biting into his shoulder. “I am selfish, not imprudent,” he replies in English.

Yuuri gingerly sits down on it, his hand sliding over the bedspread.

“Let me grab those pajamas for you,” Viktor says. He walks down the halls and into his own room. He opens the chest and pulls out the softest ones he can find, the most washed ones, the warmest ones.

Yuuri looks so small in Viktor’s bathrobe, the bathrobe that is almost too small on Viktor, the one he has been thinking of getting rid of for such reason.

Viktor also grabs a pair of warm socks and another blanket.

He moves slowly back down the hall to the room.

Yuuri stands. Takes the things carefully from Viktor.

“You are a good cook,” Viktor says, because it’s true.

Yuuri’s eyes slip away from his, to somewhere on the floor.

The blanket is thick and the pajamas are ancient , barely fit Viktor anymore. He hopes they will stay on Yuuri, instead of slipping off of him. If Yuuri thinks anything of it, though, he doesn’t say anything.

“Tell me, if you are cold,” Viktor says.

Yuuri nods.

Viktor’s knee aches, standing in the doorway.

Neither of them say goodnight, but Viktor does manage to make it back to his bedroom and lay down in bed and stare, restlessly, in the dark, at the shape of his doorway and wonder .

* * *

The thing that settles between them is not, classically, easy going.

Viktor wakes up in the morning to let Makkachin out and feed her. He slides into his robe and leans heavily into his cane as he slides the door open to his room, letting her free. He stands, watching her for a while, as she totters about the yard, and when he turns, Yuuri is sitting with his knees drawn to his chest on the wooden porch that wraps along the back of the house.

“Yuuri?” Viktor asks, and Yuuri startles, looks over at him blinking heavily. He wipes a hand over his face and rises before bowing quickly, quietly, and slipping back into his room.

Viktor watches the space he was occupying for a moment before escorting Makka to the kitchen, to make her breakfast.

This is the morning routine, a natural extension of their night routine, in which Viktor will tell Yuuri goodnight , and then lay awake in bed for hours listening for the sound of Yuuri’s door sliding open and Yuuri stepping to the porch.

And when Viktor eventually wakes up in the morning after scant hours of uncomfortable sleep, he wakes Yuuri who always clumsily  rises to go back to bed.

Yuuri does not mention it when he makes dinner, and Viktor does not ask. Viktor also doesn’t mention anything about how Yuuri watches Viktor like a hawk as he eats, as if daring him to not finish it completely. And in the afternoons between morning routine and night routine, Viktor reads the paper or listens to the records he’s finally unpacked or accepts the grocery delivery.

Viktor remains unconvinced that if he goes out, Yuuri will be there when he comes back.

It has been a week, and so far they have said six words maximum to each other, daily.

The situation is not, by standard measures, relaxed .

January bleeds onward, though, and the routine holds, until one morning, Yuuri bows and before he can slip into his room, Viktor asks, “Are you not comfortable inside?”

Yuuri looks at him as if trying his best to get his eyes to focus. He’s wearing an old t-shirt, one Viktor thinks he got at a camp when he was a teen. His skin looks cold and tight.

Yuuri murmurs something in Japanese, words too quick and slurred for Viktor to catch them, and then he goes back inside.

Viktor looks at his space, again, like he always does.

And the day washes on. Viktor accepts the grocery delivery and he reads the paper on the couch. He lets Makkachin bound in the snow. He washes his face and looks at the bags under his eyes that have been growing darker and darker since he was fifteen.

Afternoon bleeds into evening, and Viktor is sitting in the kitchen, fighting his way through a light novel.

Yuuri is standing at the stove, his back to Viktor. He is cooking something rich with onions and pork.

Yuuri is standing at the stove, and he says, very quietly, “I haven’t been inside since it happened.”

Viktor looks at him.

Yuuri’s shoulders are thin and sloped. Although he’s looking down, his spine is drawn straight and tall. He has impeccable posture, and Viktor has a nebulous hope that maybe Yuuri will stop looking so skeletally thin. His hair is tied back into a short ponytail, the edges rough and choppy.

Yuuri’s back is to him. Viktor is reading a light novel. Makkachin is sitting patiently near the kitchen but out of the way, diligently and noisily chewing on a bone.

“I’m still getting used to it,” Yuuri says. “And it feels the strangest at night.”

His voice is just loud enough to be heard. Clear but strangely paced. Viktor forgets that Yuuri is still learning how to speak again, after being alone for however long.

“I can’t sleep,” he says.

Viktor doesn’t say anything, because he’s not sure what he could say.

As always, the dinner Yuuri makes is better than anything Viktor has ever produced. And Yuuri watches Viktor sharply as Viktor only eats about half of what Yuuri serves him. The conversation is nonexistent.

They wash the dishes. Viktor limps, joints cold and aching, to the living room to keep wrestling with the novel.

And eventually he limps to his bedroom to try to sleep and he slides the door open and steps inside and he stands and he thinks. He thinks.

He hears the sound of Yuuri’s door after a while, and then the sound of Yuuri slipping back outside.

Viktor gathers his pillows and a few blankets and walks, carefully, with Makkachin to the porch.

Yuuri startles to see him and rises, but Viktor shakes his head.

He lays out his blankets on the porch, the thick wool one going under him and the down comforter on top. It’s cold. It’s January. Snow on the ground and his breath hanging in the air. His knee is going to hurt like a bitch tomorrow but--

This is important.

Viktor sets his pillows to the side and settles, sitting up, his leg extended out. He’s very glad he has the silk pajamas.

Makkachin settles heavily by his side. She sighs.

Viktor looks out into the snow. The moonlight is reflected by it, very bright and very clear.

After a long time, Yuuri says, “How did you get hurt?”

Viktor lets his eyes blink closed, slowly. “Car accident,” he says. “Sudden collision. It was very bad. I was lucky to live.”

Yuuri doesn’t say anything. What could he say?

“Why did you go to the woods?” Viktor asks.

Yuuri doesn’t answer.

The night stretches on.

Viktor eventually falls asleep, and when he wakes up at the rising of the sun, Yuuri is curled up with his knees to his chest, but Makkachin at his feet.

* * *

Yuuri feels it like a weight on his shoulders, like lead on his tongue.

He’s not sure if Viktor feels it the same way. He must. How could he not ?

It’s been years. Yuuri’s not quite sure how long but he knows it’s been years.

Viktor leaves newspapers in the living room. Yuuri looks at them and feels a wild, almost aberrant desire to read them.

He doesn’t.

The house is empty. Not empty in the way it was when the Serizawas wintered away; empty in a different way. Viktor is here but there’s no pictures. No paintings, no art. The furniture is beautiful and angular but it looks like it was brought over from another space and like it’s never been touched before. There’s a cold quality, a severity. It’s like no one has ever lived here before. Yuuri doesn’t know how to articulate to Viktor the uncanny, uncomfortable emptiness of the kamidana in the house. Yuuri doesn’t know how to ask. 

Viktor spends most of his day either in his bedroom or reading idly in the living room.

Yuuri spends most of his day trying to push down the drowning feeling.

Viktor makes himself a cup of tea one morning. Yuuri knows because he walks from the living room to the kitchen, his gait strange. He moves unsteadily, the rhythm out of place. Yuuri can hear him.

He leaves the newspaper on the couch. Half read.

Yuuri made rules. He made rules before he did and he’s kept to them. He’s tried to.

A clean break. Yuuri doesn’t read newspapers, he doesn’t watch news, he doesn’t talk to people. He doesn’t go into the town. Bathing in the winter had thus far been his singular concession to the rules. Yuuri is dead and dead people don’t keep up with current events.

But the paper is right there.

And Yuuri has already broken so many of the rules.

The paper is right there.

Yuuri grabs the newspaper, his hands shaking. He lets his fingers trace over the text, feels the meaning, traces over it in his mind. Yuuri reads about the local elections. Coldest winter in twenty years. Reads about the local schools and begins to read the big news, the international news.

And Yuuri cries. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his tears begin to make the newsprint run.

But he’s crying. He’s crying because he didn’t realize--

He didn’t realize, but it’s been six years. It’s been six years and Yuuri is twenty three.

Yuuri cries.

It’s been seven years since he took the ice. Seven years. Would he still even know how, if he did?

Not that he would, but if he did .

He doesn’t realize until he feels Makkachin’s warm, heavy body against his side that he’s not alone. She noses against the side of his face, her nose cold and wet, her tongue warm. Yuuri laugh, clearing the snot accumulating in the top of his nose and he wraps his arms around the dog.

A warm, strange comfort.   
He misses his own dog, even if he’s better off without Yuuri.

Everyone’s better off without him. Seven years and the world clipped on at its breakneck pace.

Yuuri holds Makkachin and he cries and he cries, and in the crying something desperately tired comes over him. Exhaustion like a lead shirt falls and weighs down his limbs.

Yuuri holds Makkachin, but she doesn’t mind and she doesn’t seem to want to move.

Yuuri falls asleep, on the couch, clutching her close.

 

Viktor makes a cup of tea and stands in his kitchen and thinks about calling someone. Anyone.

_Hey Yuri, funniest thing has happened-- remember that stray cat I gave you? Well_ \-- or,  _Christophe dearest, he simply looked so sad and so cold and I just couldn’t_ \-- or, maybe,  _Yakov, I need an adult ._

Yuuri’s been here a month and Viktor still knows hardly anything about him. Granted, Yuuri probably doesn’t know anything about him either but there’s something uncanny about having a roommate, especially one who isn’t a blood relative or a rinkmate or someone who’s made any kind of overtures to get to know him.

And Viktor simply isn’t sure what to do with him, this ghost from out of the woods.

Viktor looks at his phone.

He wants to tell someone. To ask someone something. Yuuri is so private, though, and Viktor doesn’t know how to ask what to do without violating that privacy.

He knows if he did, he might never see Yuuri again.

Viktor puts his phone down. Sighs heavily and grabs his cane. Makka slunk off a while ago, so he goes to find her, and--

Viktor comes back to the living room and he barely manages to not drop his tea.

Yuuri is asleep, on the couch. His arms are wound around Makkachin firmly, and Makka herself is settled down contented and drowsy eyed.

He looks at both of them for a long time.

He sets his tea down on the edge of a bookcase and hobbles over to lay a blanket over both of them.

Yuuri stays asleep. Viktor is instantly grateful; he knows if Yuuri woke up he’d shrug the blanket off and probably apologize. Yuuri won’t let him bring him water or tea or make dinner or give him any clothes other than what he wore on his back over here and the robe and pajamas.

He still looks so thin. A month he’s been here and he’s still so frighteningly thin.

His cheeks are flushed, ever so slightly. His brow is relaxed and his mouth is slack.

Viktor doesn’t want Yuuri to go. Viktor wants him to stay. He wishes he knew how to tell him. He wishes he knew what to say to make Yuuri want to stay. He wishes he knew what to say to make anyone stay. 

Viktor steps away from the couch. Grabs his tea and sees if he can figure out what’s happening in his most recent romance novel.

* * *

“You are the best cook I have ever met,” Viktor says to him, one morning.

Yuuri has a bowl of rice in front of Viktor. There’s an egg cracked over the top, raw, with a spoonful of natto and small dish with soy sauce and sesame oil on the side. That’s part of the deal— not really a _deal_ , per se, maybe an agreement— of Yuuri starting here.

Viktor can’t buy groceries. He can buy cereal and milk and eggs and dog food. But he can’t plan for what he should eat for dinner all week. He can’t anticipate getting hungry at two in the afternoon and having some fruit. Viktor can’t buy groceries, and he experiences each thing Yuuri inexpertly throws into a bowl for him with a reverence that borders on the uncomfortable. Not any more uncomfortable than anything else between them, but it’s strange.

Yuuri look at his own bowl. He swallows. “It’s just breakfast,” he says.

Viktor smiles. He holds the chopsticks Yuuri had him get clumsily, unfamiliarly. “It is very good,” he says.

Another thing, between them. Yuuri’s English is— well, it was never _great_. But it’s awful now. And Viktor’s Japanese is strange— too formal in some places, too familiar in others. They float between the two languages, unevenly, sometimes punctuated by moments of Russian, of which Yuuri knows none.

Yuuri looks down at his bowl in front of him.

The rough surface of the unglazed porcelain rasps against his hands. Even after a month of bathing inside, of not having to fish and trap his own food, of warmth and luxury, his callouses stay. Thick and heavy and ugly.

Everything about Yuuri is so ugly.

He puts the bowl back down. He takes a deep breath.

He’d leave, if he thought that Viktor would take care of himself in his absence. He’d leave, if Viktor could buy himself groceries and if he would eat like he should and if he didn’t have such a lonesome heaviness across his shoulders. Yuuri would go back to the woods, go back to being a ghost. He’d leave, but he can’t leave Viktor drowning out here, foolishly, alone.

“You are too nice to me,” Yuuri says. “My Mama, she is the best cook.”

Viktor looks up at him. Raises his eyebrows.

“She makes all the food for the inn,” Yuuri says. “Every morning, all day.”

Viktor takes a sip of tea. He takes his brewed too strong and too bitter, with a spoonful of jam stirred into it. It is the strangest thing Yuuri has ever seen.

“My mother could burn water,” Viktor says, in English. “She can’t cook.” In Japanese. “My father, either.”

Yuuri nods. He takes a bite of rice.

“Do you need lotion?” Viktor asks.

Yuuri looks up at him.

Viktor gestures with the ends of the chopsticks at Yuuri’s hands. “Your hands, they look dry,” he says. “I have lotion.”

Yuuri shakes his head. He swallows.

Viktor’s eyes are bright blue. A winter color. He looks back up at Yuuri’s face. “I have, for dry skin?” He says, in Japanese. “In the winter, my skin hurts.”

Yuuri shakes his head, again. “I’m fine,” he says.

Viktor looks back at his food. He takes another bite.

* * *

The scar is shiny and large. Viktor first catches a glimpse of it sitting in his living room.

Yuuri rolls up the edge of a pair of sweatpants to scratch his leg, and Viktor can see at the corner of his eye a big, knotted, shiny scar. Purple grey and raised.

Viktor freezes, and as suddenly as it appeared it disappears back under the material of Viktor’s old sweatpants. Viktor swallows dryly. Yuuri turns the page of the newspaper.

Viktor knows that living alone, in the woods, was hard on Yuuri and his body. Viktor knows from the white-grey callouses that cover Yuuri’s bare feet densely and the scars and callouses across his fingers and hands. It’s not the first scar Viktor has seen on Yuuri; there’s the wide and obvious one across his palm, too big and too public to hide. Viktor knows, he knows. He knows. It what he doesn’t know— what he can’t _ask_ — that makes the scar on Yuuri’s left shin so startling. 

How did it happen? How did Yuuri survive?

Yuuri reads the newspaper. He reads the newspaper and he reads all of the magazines and he reads Viktor’s old library books. He tears through them and then he reads the newspapers again. It’s like something in him shifted since that night Viktor found him asleep on the couch, and now there’s a possessive, hungry desire to learn everything all at once.

“What paper do you like best?” Viktor asks him from the armchair. He tries to sound casual, looking up from the text of his novel. He thinks it’s about giant robots. He’s not sure. Viktor reads, too, but he’s too distracted to really pay attention like he should.

Yuuri blinks and looks up. “ _Yomiuri Shimbun_ ,” he says. He clears his throat. “It was what we got at the inn.”

Viktor nods. “I’ll try to pick it up for you,” he says. “I have to go into town today.”

Yuuri nods.

There’s an understanding, that Viktor goes into town and Yuuri stays here. And Viktor trusts Yuuri to stay and not leave, and Yuuri trust Viktor to not tell anyone.

They haven’t said anything to that extent, but there’s an understanding. What Viktor thinks might be a ‘vibe.’

Viktor stands, sighs heavily. It’s early February, and the ache has been constant for weeks now.

He feels Yuuri’s eyes on him.

“I’m okay,” he says.

Yuuri doesn’t say anything as Viktor limps to his bedroom and pulls on heavier clothes. Runs his hands through his hair and slides on a pair of socks.

Viktor thinks about the edge of the scar he saw on Yuuri’s leg. He thinks about his own scars. The one split down the center of his right knee. The one that travels from the bottom of his side all the way down his hip and thigh. The confetti of smaller ones from metal or glass. There was a betrayal about that-- after so many years of faithfully taking care of his finicky skin, so much of it is ruined utterly by something out of his control. 

Viktor shoves that out of his head and grabs his cane and steps back through the house and to his car. He has to get groceries. Food for them to eat and newspapers for Yuuri to read and library books for Viktor to spend hours not understanding. 

He’d walk, but the pain is relentless today.

He drives the short distance to the library and returns a handful of books for other ones. Goes to the grocery store and grabs a few things-- some rice, some vegetables, a cut of pork at Yuuri’s request. Breadcrumbs and a container of something called ‘bonito’ that he’s never handled before. He looks carefully over the writing on containers, to check and check and check that he's getting the right things. 

There is no conversation with the cashier, who is a slight youth Viktor is pretty sure he's never seen before. 

He's putting his groceries in his car when he hears a familiar voice say, “Haven’t seen you at the bar for a while.”

Viktor turns and Mari’s there. She smiles. Her bleached hair is pushed back from her face with a headband, and it flares out a bit like a sunburst. She's wearing casual clothes, her hands stuck in the pockets of her coat. 

Viktor smiles at her. He tries to be friendly.

He tries not to think about the fact that her brother is alive and in his house.

“I’ve had someone visiting,” he says. It’s not a lie, really.

She nods. “I see. Well,” she answers. “My bar is always open if you get sick of your houseguest.”

Viktor nods again. "I appreciate that," he says. 

Mari seems to notice something. “Weather bad for the knee?” She asks.

Viktor nods.

“You should get  _shippu_  ,” she says. “They’re for pain.” She pauses, as if looking for the right word. “Patches?” She says, in English. Viktor nods, and she continues, back in Japanese.  “My brother always used them.”   
Viktor feels a warm sort of thankfulness wash over him. “I’ll try them,” he says. He tries the word in his mouth. He thinks his coach told him to use something similar once, but he hates the way salves feel on his skin.

Mari nods. "You better," she replies, and slinks off toward the store. 

Viktor realizes he has to tell Yuuri. He has to tell him she’s here and he has to her that Yuuri is still alive.

He’s not entirely sure which conversation he’s dreading more, and after he slips into the car, he grips his steering wheel and sighs heavily.

He drives home and unloads the car, grabbing both of the cloth bags and moving slowly, holding his balance on the snowy walkway toward the house. He sticks the groceries in the kitchen and grabs the bag with the books and heads back to the living room.

Hands Yuuri the paper, and Yuuri looks at it like it is some fresh treasure. It’s a little thicker than the local ones, and Yuuri seems to relish the front headline-- something about the prime minister that Viktor couldn’t fully parse.

Viktor puts some groceries away and when he comes back into the living room, Yuuri is starting at the sports pages.

There’s a piece on Japanese junior’s figure skating. Yuuri is staring at it so hard, Viktor thinks he might burn a hole in the paper.

Viktor swallows, before he says, “I used to skate. Before the accident.”

Yuuri looks up at him. His brown eyes are fathomless, holding something Viktor can see the edge of but can’t quite grasp.

VIktor breaks his gaze. The intensity of it overwhelms him.

“I got pork, at the grocery store. And bonito, like you asked,” he says.  _Your sister is here. She think you’re dead._

Yuuri nods.

He puts the paper down and slinks off.

Viktor watches him go.

Viktor looks at the junior skaters, at the pictures of them mid-routine. Their skin flushed and dewy with sweat, their costumes glittering under the harsh lights of the rink. 

He thinks about calling Yuri, just to hear him swear at him.

Viktor shakes the thought out of his head.

He walks to the kitchen and pulls out a book while Yuuri cooks. He likes the sound of someone else in the space; something about it fills something missing in him, something empty. 

He just manages to get the first chapter and a half sorted when Yuuri says, “I know.”   
Viktor looks up and looks at him. Yuuri stands in front of the stove, completely still. A pot of something steams on the stove. His head is bowed and his dark hair has slid partially out of his high, neat bun.

Viktor blinks for a moment.

_I know,_ Yuuri said.

Viktor tries to process it all, when it hits him.

Mari knew him.

Yuuri was a fan .

Yuuri  _is_  a fan.

After a long, long moment, Yuuri says, “I used to skate, too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Yuuri cooks dinner in silence. They eat in silence, together, and after a long time, Viktor cleans the dishes in silence. The only interruption is the low sound of Yuuri leaving the annex to slip into the main part of the house again, to maybe go to bed.

Viktor can’t stop thinking about it. He doesn’t know what to say, but he also can’t stop thinking about it.

Yuuri used to skate, too.

More than a month, Yuuri has lived here, and all Viktor has known about him is that he has been pretending to be dead for several years and only coming out of the cold to bathe in this house. Yuuri has a sister. Two things, Viktor has known about him. Also that he’s a great cook, and that he loves Viktor’s dog. Four things. And that he gets nervous around Viktor and--

Viktor knows preciously little about Yuuri, is the point, and this information feels like a bombshell. It feels enormous.

Yuuri used to skate.

It’s maybe the first and only thing Viktor knows about Yuuri that he hasn’t gleaned from the way Yuuri lives in his house. It’s the first thing Yuuri has told him about himself.

_I used to skate, too._

It echoes noisily in Viktor’s head, even though Yuuri had said it barely above a murmur.

Viktor lays in his bed and feels the thought consuming him, twisting and turning through him. Inviting only more questions.

Yuuri used to skate, too.

Did he compete? Did he go through juniors?

Viktor pulls up the browser on his phone and looks at the search bar for a long moment, before huffing a sigh and putting his phone back down. He so desperately wants to do a search--  _skating japan yuuri_ , maybe-- but that would be an invasion, he knows.

Viktor wants to know, is consumed by the wanting to know.

Viktor is consumed by the fear that if he asks the wrong way, says the wrong thing, that maybe Yuuri will slip away just as suddenly and strangely as he appeared.

Viktor lays up all night, thinking, and when the hours rolls around to seven am, he gets out of bed and shuffles groggily to the kitchen annex and makes himself a cup of tea. He sits in the kitchen, with the mug nested in his hands, and watches the slow winter sunlight filter into the room.

His tea has gone cold when Yuuri steps into the kitchen. Yuuri looks at him with his brown eyes wide and owlish, and he says, “I just wanted to get some water.”

Viktor opens his mouth to say something--  _Who are you? Where did you go? Why did you go? You skated? You know me?_ \-- but he closes it before anything stupid can fish its way out. He looks at the tea in his mug for a moment before he says, “I’m not subtle.”

Yuuri almost looks startled. “I’m sorry?” He says.

_Subtle._ The novel he picked up the word from was a romance between a king of some kind and a woman with no money. He brought her to court and she died suddenly, tragically. There were a few sequels he never picked up. From this one, Viktor learned _subtle, concubine,_ and _snow_. 

Viktor narrowly avoids worrying his lip between his teeth-- a nervous habit that Yakov never quite managed to break him of. He inhales. “I’m not good at...Yuuri, you used to skate?” he asks.

Yuuri looks away from him suddenly, down at the floor. Viktor can just barely see the color rush to his face. He nods. “I was fine,” he says.

Viktor swallows. Takes a sip of his lukewarm tea.

_Why did you stop? Did you stop?_

“When...did you...when did you retire?” Yuuri asks.

_When was the accident_ , he means. Viktor can hear it.

“Eleven months ago,” Viktor answers.

Yuuri doesn’t say anything for a moment, before he says, “I...my junior debut. I skated to-- the program you used, in Ayr--“

“The Lilac Fairy,” Viktor says.

Yuuri nods, his head moving quickly. “Different choreography,” he says, quickly. “I never-- my jumps...”

He trails off.

“Can I see?” Viktor asks.

-

It’s unreal, how it happens.

Viktor’s voice is quiet and earnest in the kitchen, and it ripples through Yuuri like a cold, sudden wave. He looks up at Viktor, whose blue eyes are wide with something Yuuri can’t quite place. He thinks maybe fascination. He’s not sure.

This is what finds him sitting on Viktor’s couch and watching as Viktor studies the footage from his junior debut intently. Yuuri’s honestly surprised he could find it-- it’s not like he was important enough to remember like that-- but it’s funny, his email address is still real and accessible and the file was in an attachment there. Yuuri touches a computer for the first time in six years and opens his email and shows his childhood idol his clumsy, poor imitation of his work.

Viktor watches the program and doesn’t say anything. He just restarts the video, his eyes sharply studying it again.

Every time Yuuri watches himself at fourteen miss a jump and touch the ice, he finds himself flinching. Every time his ankles kick out sloppily or he sees the way his costume drags across his fat, ungainly form, he barely represses something in himself that wants to scream. It’s so clear why he couldn’t keep skating, why he didn’t really belong on the ice. This is amatuerish at best and insulting at worst.

“This is quite good,” Viktor says.

Yuuri looks from the screen over to Viktor, whose sharp blue eyes are still closely studying the screen. His fingers are held close to his mouth, as if absently chewing on a fingernail.

“I...what?” Yuuri asks.

“This is good,” Viktor says. “It shows a lot of potential. Your coach is--“

“I didn’t have one,” Yuuri says, softly. “I never had one.”

Viktor startles and looks at him.

“I worked with my ballet teacher and the owner of the rink,” Yuuri says.

Viktor looks at him with an expression that shifts infinitesimally over time, like gears in his head are turning.

“Can I see more?” Viktor asks. 

Yuuri swallows. He nods. He types in his program for the next year into the search bar. Fifteen. His _Swan Lake_ program.

“Another?” Viktor asks, after watching Yuuri sloppily, messily fall across the ice and miss simple jumps and fuck up his choreography.

Sixteen. Musetta’s _Waltz._

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, his voice low and serious. “You...you’re a genius.”

Yuuri shakes his head looks away, gets up from the couch, and leaves the room. Walks quickly from the room to the door leading to the backyard, to the woods behind the house.

He stands on the porch and tries to catch his breath, but it stutters and shakes.

“Yuuri?” Viktor calls from the back of the house, and there the uneven noise of Viktor limping on the floorboards to where he is. “What--“

“Don’t make fun of me,” Yuuri spits out. “Please.” He takes a breath that stutters in his lungs. “I can’t take it.”

“I wouldn’t,” Viktor says. He says it quickly. Almost desperately. “I would not be that cruel.” He stands behind Yuuri, close enough that his voice can be heard but far enough away that Yuuri knows he could run away, into the woods, and never be caught and never be found again.

“Please,” Viktor says. “Please, Yuuri.”

Yuuri looks out over the ocean of snow. Torn between running back to the safety of the woods and this risky, sudden thing that’s happened to him.

“You know me,” Viktor says. “Everyone knows me. I spent my career being...known. You skated that program and you knew me. I just want the chance to know you. I can’t let you go, Yuuri, I have to know.”

Yuuri looks out on the ocean of snow with his pulse racing. He can’t figure out why he told Viktor he skated. He can’t figure out what to do now.

He looks down and Makkachin sits beside him, her tongue hanging out of her mouth, tail wagging lazily.

Yuuri bends slightly to pat her, feels her curly coat under his fingers.

He shivers a little. The winter seems colder this year than it has been before.

Yuuri looks out over the yard to the line of trees that press against it.

Yuuri takes a cold breath, one that stings against his throat and lungs. He turns, away from the cold.

He turns, looks at Viktor. "You probably have questions," he says, softly. 

* * *

_ Long ago, long ago, there was a boy who went into the woods. He went with his teacher and his classmates and they ventured down winding dirt paths and past tall, proud trees. And he looked at the quiet of the woods and he wondered, for just a moment, what it would be like to linger there with them, just a little longer. The boy had many responsibilities-- he was an arduous student and he worked hard to the very best of his art and he wanted so badly for his family to be proud of him, and he never thought he could ever be quite good enough. _

_ If sometimes, the thought he would never be good enough kept him from sleeping, he didn't tell anyone. It was ridiculous, and he didn't want to make anyone worry.  _

_ And the boy and his teacher and his classmates ventured deeper and deeper into the woods and the trees grew deeper and the eventually set up camp for the night. _

_ But in the night, a storm came; stronger and wetter than anyone had imagined, and the banks of the river breached and carried the boy away. _

_ And when he woke up, the boy didn’t know where he was. The trees were taller and the trail was gone and his teacher and classmates had disappeared, too. _

_ And the boy realized that maybe he couldn’t disappoint anyone this way; he could simply disappear and never be seen. He could live among the tall trees and the quiet stream. And it wasn’t easy-- he caught his own fish in the stream and foraged for mushrooms and vegetables and sprouts from the woods. And sometimes, deep in the night, he would steal into town and take from their garbage and sheds and laundry lines. And time passed, and the boy knew that no one would really miss him. And as time passed, the boy came to almost think he didn't miss anyone, too.  _

_ But all this was long ago, long ago, and there would be no reason for anyone to remember it anyway. _

* * *

Viktor is eight the first time his heart breaks. He’s outside, playing with his brother, running in the snow. He’s outside and he looks up and he sees, just in time, a speeding car hit a stray dog. Viktor remembers screaming, he remembers running into the street, he remembers almost getting hit himself. He remembers the dog already being dead, warm corpse cooling rapidly in the winter air. Viktor remembers seeing the dog die, a small animal, crushed suddenly and meaninglessly. Viktor is eight the first time his heart breaks.

When Viktor is fifteen, he sees Vanya kiss his girlfriend. Vanya, with dark curls and a mean laugh and clever green eyes. Vanya, three years older than Viktor and wild and free and beautiful. The second time his heart breaks.

When Viktor is eighteen, he tells his parents. Packing up his bedroom, clearing away his childhood and life with the terrible, urgent knowledge that he has no family now, the third time.

Viktor’s heart breaks again, watching Yuuri stand on the porch, running away from Viktor. His eyes are glassy behind his scratched, smudged glasses. His skin is flushed red. Even after all the pork and oil and grains— even after every meal Viktor has seen Yuuri painstakingly prepare and then eat— he is woefully thin.

Viktor looks at him. He wishes he could decode the puzzle of him just by looking. He wishes he knew—

He wishes he knew Yuuri. He wishes he knew him really at all.

Viktorsteps to the side of the doorway, inviting.

Yuuri shuffles in and steps into the living room. He sits down on the couch with his legs folded underneath himself. He clears his throat. Viktor sits in the armchair opposite him. Makkachin steps up onto the couch and settles her head near Yuuri’s hand.

“Yuuri,” he says.

“They don’t miss me anymore” he says. “I know they don’t. They’re better without me.”

 _Your sister misses you,_ Viktor thinks, but he doesn’t say.

“I’m no one, Viktor,” Yuuri say, in careful, quiet Japanese. “I’m no one. I’m a ghost.And it’s better this way.”

“That’s not true, Yuuri,” Viktor says. “That’s not true. Yuuri, that’s not true.” Viktor shakes his head. “Yuuri, you have to— you matter. You’re someone. Yuuri—“ He pauses swallows, dryly. “Yuuri, I— I’m almost certain it’s— Yuuri, your sister is in town. She lives here, and she—“

Yuuri’s expression shifts. He goes drawn and pale, his eyes growing wide and brown. He shakes his head. He shakes his head.

“I didn’t tell her,” he says. “I didn’t tell her, Yuuri. But you should— she deserves to know you’re alive. Your family deserves to know you’re alive; you deserve a _life,_ Yuuri. You deserve to be happy.”

“You’re the one hiding!” Yuuri shouts, his voice crackling through the air. “You act like you’re no one— I _know you! I knew you! I saw you!_ ” His voice is suddenly huge in Viktor’s empty house. “You act like you can just hide from your life and your accomplishments, but I know you! You can’t tell me— you can’t act like you _know_. You can’t— you can’t act like you know or you know better than I do the ways I’m meaningless. You can’t act like you aren’t _hiding_.”

“I’m not fucking hiding,” Viktor spits. “I didn’t fake my own death!”

Viktor looks at Yuuri, across from him, in the living room, for a long moment. It’s drawn tight and tense and awful between them. This angry, terrible thing.

Yuuri looks back at him, his eyes all anger. Yuuri looks back at him and there’s a sudden sound.

A doorbell. Viktor turns. It's his first time hearing it-- he thought he didn't have one at all. Yuuri flees down the hall.

Someone’s here.

Viktor runs his hands through his hair and limps from the living room to the door.

“You look like shit,” is the first thing Yuri says to him, standing on his doorstep, cheetah-print roll-away bag in tow.

Viktor looks at him for a moment.He shakes his head. He doesn’t have the energy for this— not right now and certainly not tomorrow or the next day or any days after that.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “You have a season right now.”

“You _promised_ ,” he says, storming through the door, dragging his bag behind himself. “I looked it up. The nearest rink is only an hour by bus. You’re going to make me a program.”

“I _retired!”_ Viktor answers, his voice louder than he’d like. Two people named Yuri in his life and _neither_ will listen to him. Christ. “I retired! I am not coaching you! I am not making a program for you! What are you doing here?”

“You made a promise!” Yuri says, flinging his hood away from his face. His voice cracks around the words. “You promised me! I don’t care that you retired and I don’t care about your knee! You promised me. You’re going to fucking make me a program, and then I’ll leave.”

Viktor takes a deep breath. “You can sleep on my couch for one night. Tomorrow morning, I will buy a ticket for you to go back to St. Petersburg—“

“Moscow,” Yuri interrupts.

“ _Whatever_ ,” Viktor spits. “You will go back to Yakov and Lilia and you will let me get on with my life.”

“You’re living out of fucking boxes,” Yuri replies.

“I’m living on my own terms!” Viktor answers. “You are lucky I don’t send you to a hotel immediately!” He takes a deep breath. He’s so tired. Today has been so much longer than he wanted it to be. So much more _eventful_.

“Yakov barred me from the rink,” Yuri says. His voice almost sounds small.

Viktor looks at him. Yuri, taller than Viktor remembers. His blonde hair is a little darker; no longer bright blonde but fading to a light brown.His eyes are still green though, and still so much more vulnerable than he ever expects. Yuri is older, but he is still a child.

“Yakov—“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Yuri says. “I can’t go back.”

Viktor takes a deep breath.

“I have had a day you cannot imagine, Yuri,” he says. “I am too tired to solve this problem tonight. I am going to bed. You will sleep on the couch. I have spare blankets I will give you. When I wake up in the morning, we will talk.”

“You don’t have a guest bedroom?” he asks.

“You think yourself my only guest?” Viktor replies.

Yuri wrinkles his nose at Viktor. "Who else is here?" He demands. 

"That is my business, Yuri," Viktor answers. "Maybe you will know in the morning. I am getting you blankets. We will talk more later."

Yuri huffs. He pulls off his coat and his shoes, hanging them on the hooks in the foyer and stashing the shoes underneath a bench. He steps into the house proper, his bag thudding up the ledge dividing the foyer from the rest of the house. 

Viktor takes a moment. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, just long enough to take a breath, and then he steps back into his house. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Yuuri’s so angry— he’s so angry he feels his heart uneven in his chest, his voice crackling in his throat— and then he’s  _ terrified _ . 

He darts from the living room to the other side of the house, to where the room he’s been sleeping in is. He steps into the room and closes the door quickly, quietly, and he stands on the other side of it, listening. 

It could be anyone at Viktor’s door. It could be Viktor’s family or his lover or his friend. It could be any number of his well wishers— Yuuri knows he must have them. It could be the police, finally come to investigate the woods after all these years. It could be his sister. His sister who is here in town. 

It could be anyone. Yuuri stands in the bedroom, dizzy from the emotional whiplash. 

There’s a loud conversation in Russian. And then there’s the sound of Viktor moving through the house, pulling something out of a closet, and then silence, again. 

Yuuri stands in the bedroom and he listens to the silence and he waits for his life to come crashing around his ears. His death. Same difference. 

Yuuri stands with his back to his door for what feels like an eternity, and then he hears a gentle, scraping kind of sound, of Viktor’s knuckles rapping oh so lightly against the door. 

Yuuri stands there, frozen. 

“It’s someone from Russia,” Viktor says, quietly. “Someone who knew me. They’ll be here in the morning.”

Yuuri stands there. He doesn’t say anything back.

“Please don’t go,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri doesn’t say anything back, but he doesn’t leave, either, despite how much he wants to. The door is there, inviting him outward. He knows his tent must still be standing there in the woods, the path well trod and familiar. Yuuri wants to go. He aches to go. 

He’s not sure why he stays. 

He does not sleep that night. He sits up in the bedroom, listening to the sounds bounded by the thin walls. 

When the morning comes, he sneaks from out of his bedroom to the kitchen, where Viktor already stands at the stove, stirring a pot of porridge. It’s still dark, the room lit with grey, static shadows of light leaking in through the windows from outside. There’s a light above the stove that’s on, throwing sharp black shadows in the spaces where it doesn’t land. It’s still early in the winter morning. It’s still in the time before the world wakes.

Yuuri sits down at the table. He watches Viktor stir the pot. He’s leaned over the stove, with his arm resting on hood. He’s leaning against the arm, letting his back curve in a long, graceful arc. Yuuri looks at him, at the flutter of his silver fringe over his eyes. The features of his face are hard to see from this angle, with this light, with this argument between them. 

“You stayed,” Viktor says. He doesn’t look up. 

Yuuri nods. 

Viktor stirs, the spoon rasping against the bottom of the pot. 

“I know this is not smart,” Viktor comments again. “I think this is also the only decision I can make.”

“He won’t tell anyone?” Yuuri asks. 

“We won’t tell  _ him _ ,” Viktor answers.

Viktor places a bowl of porridge in front of Yuuri. There’s a large spoonful of strawberry jam to the side of it, and beside that a spoonful of cream. 

Yuuri looks at it for a moment. Viktor shelters his own bowl in his hands and sits down at the table. He stirs it for a moment, before he takes a bite. 

The conversation from last night sits between them, unsteady. 

“Mari—“ Yuuri starts, but then the door is thrown open and someone stalks into the room. 

It’s the only way to really put it. It’s something about how the teen holds their spine and shoulders, something about their expression, something about the way their neck connects to their head. They shoot Viktor a dirty look before they fix their look on Yuuri. 

They say something in Russian. 

Viktor clears his throat. 

“Yuuri,” he says, in English. “This is Yuri Plisetsky. We once skated at the same rink.”

Yuri Plisetsky, a haystack of blonde hair and sharp green eyes, wrinkles his nose at Yuuri. He looks like he wants to spit on the floor. He says something else in Russian. 

Yuuri looks back at his porridge, which is suddenly  _ fascinating.  _

“Don’t be rude,” Viktor says, in English. “I will kick you out.”

“You won’t,” Yuuri and Yuri say, simultaneously. 

Yuuri feels his stomach drop. He pushes the porridge away and leaves the kitchen. 

* * *

Viktor watches Yuuri disappear,  _ again _ , and he sighs. He pokes at his kasha and then pushes his bowl away. He looks at Yuri. 

“Yuri,” he sighs, running his hands through his hair. “What— what do you want? What happened?”

“Who the fuck is that?” Yuri spits. “Your  _ boyfriend _ ?”

Viktor doesn’t take the bait, just looks at Yuri from across the table.

There’s a tense moment, stretching between them like a taut thread. Viktor knows Yuri is cruel; he’s young. Yuri knows Viktor is cruel; it’s only his nature. Viktor feels cold, terrible, sitting in front of Yuri. Both of them waiting for which one will strike the other first.

“I need a coach,” Yuri says. “And a rink. I can’t go back to Russia.”

Yuri surprises Viktor. He doesn’t go for the throat, dodging instead to the heart of the issue.

“What  _ happened _ ?” Viktor repeats. 

Yuri doesn’t look at him. 

Viktor runs his hand over his face and through his hair. “Whatever,” he says. “Whatever happened, I am not your coach, Yuri. I am not  _ qualified _ to coach you and I physically can’t make it out on the ice. You were with me at the hospital— they told me I might not  _ walk _ again.”

“Grandpa died,” Yuri murmurs. His voice is very low. 

Viktor doesn’t know what he could say. What he  _ would _ say. Things between Viktor and his family were always strained at best, but Yuri was close to his grandfather. His only family. 

“Yuri,” Viktor starts, keeping his voice soft. 

“I don’t want your fucking pity,” Yuri interrupts. “Grandpa died and Yakov kicked me out of the rink and I don’t have anywhere else to go, Viktor.”   
Viktor looks at him. 

Skinny, angry boy, with no life but the ice. 

Viktor takes a deep breath. He surprises himself.

“You can stay,” he says. “You can stay, until you’re ready to go back. But I retired, Yuri. I don’t skate anymore. I don’t go to rinks. I don’t run. I can’t coach you. I can’t and I won’t.”

Yuri’s green eyes flash angry and sharp. 

“I need a fucking  _ coach! _ ” he shouts, standing suddenly, throwing his hands in the air. 

“Then you need to go somewhere else,” Viktor answers. 

Yuri looks at him. He looks down. 

“You fucking promised,” Yuri spits. 

“Things changed,” Viktor says.

Yuri sighs, sharply, and storms out of the kitchen. 

Viktor pokes his spoon around in his bowl for a moment more before he gets up from the table and tosses the bowl in the sink. He looks at it for a moment before he washes all the dishes. He dries his hands-- his skin is so dry in the sharp winter. He feels his knee  _ ache _ under him. 

He limps out of the kitchen annex and back to the main house. He pauses in front of the door, feeling the cold air against him for just a moment. 

* * *

Yuuri hears the boy stomp back into the house a few minutes after him. He hears his heavy footsteps on the floor and a door close. Yuuri sits on the bed in the room with his knees pulled up to his chest. He scratches his nails against his scalp and takes a deep breath. 

His door slides open, suddenly. 

“Who are you?” The boy demands. 

Yuuri looks at him. 

His own English is rusty; clumsy. The accent this kid has manages to almost entirely eclipse the words. It takes Yuuri a moment to hear him, to process him. 

Yuuri looks at his hands. At the scar on the back of his right thumb where he misjudge how sharp his knife was. At the ragged cuticles and closely bitten nails. He presses his lips together. 

Yuuri looks back up at the boy.

“I am no one,” Yuuri says, carefully and deliberately. 

The boy’s eyes narrow. He says something in quick Russian.

Yuuri shakes his head.

The boy huffs a quick sigh. 

He points out of the door, in a direction. “Viktor,” he spits. “He is your coach?”   
Yuuri loses control of his expression for a moment, his brow crumpling, his eyes going wide.

Yuuri shakes his head, frantically. “No,” he says. “No-- no. I don’t skate.”

The boy squints at him a minute more, before he turns and leaves Yuri’s room as suddenly as he came. 

Yuuri swallows. His throat is dry. 

Yuuri remembers this moment later, as the beginning of the end. 

* * *

He slides the door open and steps inside.

At least, this is what Viktor means to do. He slides the door open and  _ something _ happens. Viktor isn’t sure what it is. He’s not sure he could explain it, really. Something  _ gives _ . The pain shoots through him like lightning, and he finds himself up and then he’s down, on the floor, gasping like a drowning man. Viktor curls his hand into a fist and beats the floor with it, once, hard. He curls under, breathing heavily into the cavity between his mouth and the floor. Viktor lays there, he’s not sure how long. 

And then there are strong, firm hands wrapping around his shoulders and carefully pulling him up from the floor. 

“Don’t,” Viktor says, his teeth gritted. 

But he’s still pulled upward by Yuuri’s scarred, calloused hands. Upward and into the house, with his arm draped over Yuuri’s bony shoulders and his fingers fisted pain-wracked in his shirt. 

Viktor doesn’t know where his cane went. He clenches his jaw so firmly he thinks his teeth might shatter as they hobble carefully to Viktor’s bedroom, and then into Viktor’s bed. 

“ _ Don’t _ ,” Viktor repeats, as Yuuri carefully lays him into the bed. “Fucking-- stop. Don’t.”

Yuuri’s eyes are serious. His posture is stiff. Angry and proud. 

“Do not make threats you will not keep,” Yuuri says. “When we fight. Do not make threats you will not keep.”

Yuuri looks from Viktor’s eyes to his leg. 

“You will not scold me for dying,” Yuuri says. “You came here to do the same thing. If you want me to stay, you will let me get ice for your knee.”

“I thought you said don’t make threats you won’t keep,” Viktor hisses. He sits up and presses carefully around his knee.  _ Shit _ . It’s swollen already. 

“You want both things,” Yuuri says. “You want to be alone. You want to keep me in this house. You can either push me away or you can let me get you ice. You cannot have both. You think our talk from last night is over because a rude child is here now. Our talk is not over.”

“Your sister deserves to know you’re alive,” Viktor says. 

“My sister is better if I am dead,” Yuuri says. “Either you will tell her or you will not. You will not use her as a...you will not use her to keep me here.”   
“I can do this,” Viktor says. “I can do this, by myself. You don’t get to use leaving as a threat to nurse me.”

“You can be hurt and alone, or your can let me get you ice,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor takes a deep breath, one more time, between his clenched teeth. 

“There’s a bag for ice in the medicine cabinet,” Viktor says, eventually. 

Yuuri looks at him and nods. He slips out of the room quietly, leaving Viktor there to breathe through the slow, sluggish pain that is settling rapidly into his leg. 


End file.
